ReviewCommunications biology2023
Fermentation technology as a driver of human brain expansion.
Review in Communications biology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 28 citations in OpenAlex.
- Microbial Exopolysaccharides, Redox Modulation, and Antioxidant Activity in Fermented Foods.Antioxidants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Coordinated regulation of colonic fluid and mucus secretion.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2026Review
- From scarcity to ultra-processed foods: a conceptual analysis of how their properties interact with characteristics of food intake regulation mechanism.Frontiers in nutrition · 2026Review
- Ecological factors that drive microbial communities in culturally diverse fermented foods.BMC microbiology · 2025Article
- Ethanol ingestion via frugivory in wild chimpanzees.Science advances · 2025Article
- The role of fermented foods in maternal health during pregnancy and infant health during the first 1,000 days of life.Frontiers in nutrition · 2025Review
- Fermented Foods and Food Microorganisms: Antioxidant Benefits and Biotechnological Advancements.Antioxidants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- From sustainable feedstocks to microbial foods.Nature microbiology · 2024Article
- Symbiosis and the Anthropocene.Symbiosis (Philadelphia, Pa.) · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Brain tissue is metabolically expensive. Consequently, the evolution of humans' large brains must have occurred via concomitant shifts in energy expenditure and intake. Proposed mechanisms include dietary shifts such as cooking. Importantly, though, any new food source must have been exploitable by hominids with brains a third the size of modern humans'. Here, we propose the initial metabolic trigger of hominid brain expansion was the consumption of externally fermented foods. We define "external fermentation" as occurring outside the body, as opposed to the internal fermentation in the gut. External fermentation could increase the bioavailability of macro- and micronutrients while reducing digestive energy expenditure and is supported by the relative reduction of the human colon. We discuss the explanatory power of our hypothesis and survey external fermentation practices across human cultures to demonstrate its viability across a range of environments and food sources. We close with suggestions for empirical tests.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.